Child, Youth and Family Services
April 13, 2016
The following statement was given today in the House of Assembly by the Honourable Sherry Gambin-Walsh, Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services:
Maintaining a Positive Partnership with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
Mr. Speaker, I rise in this Honourable House today to highlight an important partnership between Child, Youth and Family Services and the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
This foundation is a national American nonprofit public charity with the mission of dramatically increasing the adoptions of children from North America’s foster care systems. Through the foundation’s Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Program, grants are awarded to public and private adoption agencies to hire child-specific recruiters. These recruiters implement proactive, child-focused recruitment programs targeted exclusively at moving the longest-waiting children from foster care into adoptive families.
In June 2014, the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services obtained a grant to contribute towards hiring its own child-specific recruiter. Our recruiter receives ongoing training from the foundation to help employ practices and proven tactics focused on finding the best home for a child through the starting points of familiar circles of family, friends and neighbours, and then reaching out to the communities in which they live.
The department is now in its second grant year and, to date, almost 10 children have been successfully matched and are in various stages of the adoption process as they move towards having a permanent and forever home.
As Dave Thomas once said, “These children are not someone else’s responsibility. They are our responsibility. And it’s time to take action.”
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
2016 04 13 2:25 p.m.